Rich detailed her life in a December 2021 article in MUM, the magazine of the Society of American Magicians: Gloria Metzner was born on Aug. Dea held a singular distinction: She was, he believes, the first magician ever to perform in a Las Vegas casino. One catalyst was Lance Rich, a magician and magic historian, who, while doing research for “Neon Dreams: Vegas Greats, Dates and Firsts,” a talk he gave at the Magic Collectors Expo in August 2021, determined that Ms.

Dea (pronounced day) might well have died in obscurity if not for a serendipitous confluence of recent events. Dea died on March 18 at an assisted living center in Las Vegas, her caregivers told local news outlets. In between those two splashes of publicity, Gloria Metzner adopted the stage name Gloria Dea, made history in Las Vegas, had a few tabloid-ish moments in a brief film career, faded into obscurity for a half-century or so, and then, in her final years, was rediscovered and celebrated by her fellow magicians. “Anything with sleight-of-hand and billiard balls I liked,” she said almost a century later, in a 2022 interview with KVVU-TV of Las Vegas on the occasion of her 100th birthday. An accompanying photograph showed Gloria holding three balls between the fingers of her right hand, a moment from a trick in which she would make the balls appear and disappear like, well, magic. “Seven-year-old Gloria Metzner, 3607 Park Boulevard, is the youngest working magician in the world,” The Oakland Tribune of California declared in a November 1929 article about her.

Gloria by Kerry Young